


Baby, Won't You Sing With Me Somehow?

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: But Really This Is Just A Sad One, Depression, Hannibal's Trying To Be An Actual Person, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Infidelity, Interspersed with Mild Doses of Fluff, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Please Come Back Another Day if You Are Not In The Mood For Sad, Post-Season/Series 03 Finale, Suicidal Thoughts, Their Success Varies, This fic is dedicated to the Ritz Carlton NOLA minibar, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Will's Trying To Cope, a bit with a dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 07:27:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10635126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: There were knives, of course, and other objects that could be turned to use as weapons.  They both took care that there should be, in all the rooms.  They would not be caught unarmed and unaware: taken in separately, torn apart.   None of the arrangements had been made with the intention of use on each other.  Hannibal had supposed, in the early days when Will’s intentions had been more opaque to him, that Will would still do him the courtesy of bare hands if it came to that.   He hadn’t considered the alternative: that he could ever again look at Will Graham and see only betrayal.Or: the one I called 'the fic of infinite sadness' while I was writing it, so let that warn you as needed. Mind the tags, and let me know if I should add any.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Does this need a lot more editing and revising? Yes. Am I gonna do that? No. This one has been sitting in front of me too long, I need it out of my head and into the world so I can write fluffier things. Apologies for any errors or roughness you therefore find. 
> 
> The prompt for this one was: [_I want a cheating fic. Will cheating on Hannibal preferably. But like, with a happy ending, maybe lol. I wanna see how you would interpret what a post-fall love stricken Hannibal would do if that happened._](https://hannigramandromancek.tumblr.com/post/157672926166/time-to-give-my-murder-bestie-damnslippyplanet-a)
> 
> And I went, _hahahaha, no, I can't write that, that would never happen, unless Will just wanted to be stabbed, hahaha....oh, shit, he wants to be stabbed, doesn't he?. This just stopped being funny really fast, damn it_ and then suddenly I had seven thousand words on Will's death wish. GOOD TIMES, FOLKS.
> 
> Whether this has the requested happy ending depends, I suppose, on one's tolerance for ambiguity, melancholy, and acceptance that sometimes you decide to take the shards of your teacup and build them into something new that doesn't resemble a teacup or hold any tea but that is beautiful and yours even if it doesn't seem useful to anyone else. I will just say that it qualifies as a happy ending in my head. Which may tell you more about my head than anything else.

Will vanished and reappeared, tidal.

*

Always a quick study, Hannibal learned to see it coming.  Perhaps it was more lunar than tidal, all things considered: something would remind Will of all the reasons he sometimes felt they should not have lived, and the spark behind his eyes would begin to wane until there was only darkness left.

It might take a week or a month for the blackness to swallow Will fully, and Hannibal could hold it at bay for a time if he worked hard enough. But eventually he would wake alone.

The first time was as close to unbearable as anything he’d experienced in longer than he cared to remember.  He haunted the city, searching partly for Will and partly for distraction. Half a dozen people skirted the edges of untimely deaths only because in the end, Hannibal didn’t want his next kill to happen without Will by his side.

The second time, and the ones after, Hannibal simply passed the days in a sort of suspended animation.  He went looking for the bottles that Will hid all over the house, threw away the empty ones, and drank the rest himself on the nights when he couldn’t sleep alone.

* 

> When Will was better, all there in their home and alive behind his eyes, they cooked together.  
> 
> Once Will had stood barefoot in their kitchen and laughed until he was nearly bent double at a pun that hadn’t actually struck Hannibal as funnier than any other when he’d said it.  Will had just been in a mood, loose and easy, hungry for dinner after a long run in the afternoon heat.
> 
> He’d brought home a handful of flowers that day, wild things from the roadside along his route.  They were half-wilted from being pulled up roughly and then clutched in his hand all the way home in the heat.  
> 
> They’d perked up after Hannibal trimmed the stems.  They floated in a bowl for days, a reminder that Will thought of him even when they were apart.

*

“Can I–,” Will had said the first time he came home, faltering in the doorway like a vampire or supplicant.  As if Hannibal would ever, in any of the worlds that might have been, have turned him away.

“Come in,” he’d said, because he didn’t know whether he was allowed to say _come home_.

Will had let Hannibal wrap a blanket around his too-thin shoulders. He’d let Hannibal feed him broth, and he’d let Hannibal hold him up while he threw it up again, stomach rebelling as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

He’d gone away and he’d come home again, and Hannibal had thought maybe that would be the end of it.

*

> There was a woman once, in the market.  Hannibal had been two stalls ahead, lured by a glimpse of fresher greens across the way, before he realized Will had fallen behind.
> 
> The woman only looked like Alana for the barest instant. The height was all wrong, and the set of her shoulders.  But he could see what had caught Will’s attention.  They looked well together, two dark heads bent over something in Will’s basket that the woman was asking him about.
> 
> Hannibal had thought of multiple ways to kill her in the time it took to cross the aisle again, back to Will’s side.  He’d forgotten them all when Will looked at him, gaze sharp and curious and knowing.
> 
> “Viktor,” he’d said as he reached for Hannibal’s arm, an amused lilt in his tone.  “There you are.  Come over here, this lady has a question for you.”
> 
> Hannibal had understood immediately that it had been a test of some sort, but was less certain whether he’d passed it.  He’d stayed close to Will’s side until the woman was long out of sight.

*

When Will was gone, Hannibal left a light on always so that Will might, passing outside, see a safe harbor.

 _Where you can always find me_ , he’d said, with the snow-covered ground cold and wet under his knees, and that much hadn’t changed.  

Someone else might find them first.  It was more likely to be Alana than the FBI, with her more flexible resources and morals.  But one way or another, they would be found. Hannibal might have to run and there might be no one left to leave the light on for Will, to signal him safely home.

The third time, as Will’s nightmares returned and he spoke less and less, smelled more steadily of whiskey and fear, Hannibal had whispered it into the nape of Will’s neck late at night.

“If they come and you’re not here,” he’d said.  Will had flinched but not denied.  “I’ll go back to the house in New York.  I’ll wait for you there.”

Will curled in on himself tighter, and made a sound that hurt to hear.  He nodded once, small but unmistakable.

Hannibal was not surprised to wake alone.  It would have happened soon enough anyway. He’d only hastened an inevitability.  

*

> They didn’t make love right away, although Hannibal had thought they might. There had been a kiss - as chaste a thing as could be summoned from blood and saltwater and death - and then nothing more for a time.   Even on the boat there had been no further intimacies, despite or because of the enforced closeness.  
> 
> Will had come to him later, on dry land, in the second of the homes they’d shared. He’d said, “I can’t make any promises.” He’d touched Hannibal so gently that it had been its own form of pain.
> 
> It didn’t stop Hannibal’s name from _sounding_ like a promise when Will said it again, after he’d said "I just need to know "and Hannibal had said "let me"  and kissed him for the second time.  
> 
> They’d fallen the rest of the way down together as if the months between the halves of their fall had only been a heartbeat.  

*

Hannibal was aware that nothing about keeping Will with him was a kindness.  It was not healthy for Will, even if he wanted it.  That _love_ as it was commonly understood would likely require Hannibal to walk away and leave Will to rebuild a life that didn’t leave him racked with needless guilt.

The common understanding of love had never held a particular appeal for Hannibal, and was easy enough to dismiss.

It clearly had meant something to Will once, but not enough to hold him to a common life in the end.

*

> There was a string of particularly good months in Venezuela, where Will grew strong and tan and smiled every day.  If Hannibal didn’t manage to coax a sleepy morning smile from Will, it didn’t matter.  They would take walks and Will would find something to smile at in the town, or on his way back from his afternoon swim.  
> 
> Will slept deep and dreamless, and Hannibal’s own dreams eased in response.
> 
> Will planted a garden - a small one, mostly tomatoes and peppers, but a garden nonetheless.  A hint of a future. He came indoors smelling of dirt and sweat and life. Hannibal held him down so he couldn’t go shower it off, so that Hannibal could sniff and lick and breathe him to his heart’s content.  
> 
> Will let him.  Laughed, and said, “Something’s burning,” but didn’t make him stop until they were both loose-limbed and sated and dinner long past saving.

_*_

> When they’d washed to shore wrecked and filthy and alive, Will had dragged himself upright and looked around him and said only _oh._ A small breath that was more resignation than relief.
> 
> Hannibal had understood then that Will would always find his way back to the cliff’s edge. He’d thought perhaps with enough time he could, if not reduce death’s lure, at least build up Will’s defenses against it.  Will needed sunlight, and three real meals a day, and the fathomless acceptance that only Hannibal could give him.
> 
> He needed a new life, better than the old.  Something worth staying for. Hannibal was good at building new lives.
> 
> He’d said “Come with me” quickly, before Will could make any move back toward the water. He’d gotten Will on his feet and moving, forward and up, before any second-guessing could set in.

*

Will came back marked.  He wore long sleeves for days even in the heat.  He didn’t want to speak about the angry red line of the healing cut on his left wrist, except to stare a challenge at Hannibal with eyes that said: _we match now, is this all you ever wanted for us, too?  Are you happy now?_

Hannibal remembered Matthew Brown: the drag of the blade down the insides of his wrists, and the slow tickling drip of his own blood.  He’d worried about nerve damage afterwards, but there hadn’t been any to speak of.  He could still cook and dismember. He could play the harpsichord and coax the sweetest sounds from Will.  

Will hadn’t cut as deep, but caution should still be taken. He wondered intensely but did not ask what had stopped Will’s hand, with no Alana and Jack to come charging to the rescue. What had brought him home to Hannibal this time. Whether he felt the same pain when he was gone that Hannibal did without him, like a phantom limb, and whether the blade had hurt more or less than that.

He finished wrapping the fresh bandages and held on for a moment longer, allowing himself a single press of lips to the inside of Will’s wrist.  It was less a kiss than a tasting.  He couldn’t discern the scent or flavor of Will’s skin, not through the fresh application of ointment and gauze.

Will stared down at him blankly, shivered or shuddered, and did not pull his hand away.

He came to bed that night and took Hannibal apart slowly with barely any use of his hands at all, as if to prove some obscure point to himself.  

For the next several mornings he let Hannibal check his injury again and change his bandages more often than strictly necessary.  He allowed Hannibal to press kisses to the thin skin knitting itself back together.  

It was monstrous for Hannibal to be happy, but that knowledge didn’t change the fact of it: happiness like a lash, bright-sharp and searing. Happiness slicing him straight down to the bone.

*

Killing again would push Will one way or the other off the razor’s edge.  Hannibal considered it, but the risk of pushing Will into it was too high, not knowing which way he’d fall.  

It didn’t stop Hannibal remembering the black sheen of the blood, or the way Will had touched him in the moment before they flew.  

*

> Will still refused the suggestion of a dog, but he had begun to look at them on the street again, after the early months when looking had seemed to hurt him too much.  He stopped to pat them when the chance arose.  He fed a few bites from his fingers to a stray loitering outside a sidewalk cafe.
> 
> Once he flirted with a particularly winsome specimen through a shop window for several minutes.  Hannibal thought Will might decide to go inside and pet it.  He thought they might bring the puppy home.  They could name it Virgil: a large name for a small scrap to grow into.
> 
> In the end Will said only, “It wouldn’t be fair; if we have to run, we might not be able to take him.”   He took Hannibal’s hand as they walked away.  He looked back at Virgil just once, and then changed the subject to a sailing expedition he wanted to go on.
> 
> They didn’t walk that way again for a few weeks, and when they did, Virgil was gone from the window.

*

Will left again.  There had been an article and pictures, a breathless _how have they disappeared so thoroughly and where are they hiding?_ piece.  Will had put it aside but not before he’d absorbed enough to poison, apparently.  Hannibal made a note of the journalist’s name.  His list was electronic now, but it served the purpose as well as the Rolodex had.  He might find himself in Baltimore again one day, with time to make calls.

He ate mechanically but well enough. Hannibal had not changed so much that he couldn’t take pleasure in preparing and eating a perfect meal for himself, even when Will was gone and the meat only meat.

He tended Will’s garden in a sort of sympathetic magic: _if I care for your growing things, you’ll come back to them_ .  Will had acquired some sort of chemical bug spray that would surely affect the taste of the herbs; Hannibal swapped it for a homemade soap-and-water mixture in a spray bottle and dropped the old container into the trash can with a satisfying _clang_.  

He went to bed early and without changing the sheets, for as long as Will’s scent clung to them. 

*

> Will had looked up at him once, head pillowed on Hannibal’s thigh, drifting in and out of sleep on the overstuffed sofa on a quiet afternoon.  “Did you ever have a comfortable piece of furniture in your life before this?” he’d asked, out of nowhere.  
> 
> Hannibal had slept beautifully in his enormous bed in Baltimore, whether alone or in company.  At the time, he wouldn’t have said anything was missing at all.
> 
> “I had a second pillow at one point while in Alana’s care,” he temporized. “I had been particularly well behaved for some time.  I lost the privilege eventually but it was strikingly comfortable, for a time.”
> 
> Will had held his gaze, steady and unblinking, before reaching up to touch Hannibal’s cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers. He closed his eyes and said nothing else for quite some time.  He might have been asleep, but Hannibal thought not.  

*

Will came home quietly; Hannibal didn’t wake when he arrived.  He didn’t sense anything amiss at first when he woke, other than the bedding’s failure to smell like anything but linen and laundry soap.  It had been twelve days; not even Will’s aftershave could linger that long.

He showered and dressed and was nearly to the kitchen before dual realizations arrived, sudden and sharp.

 _The world was right again:_ Will was home.

 _The world was askew:_ He was not alone, or had recently been not-alone - the scent of unfamiliar perfume was faint from where Hannibal stood, but unmistakable.

They lived nowhere near a fault line, but it didn’t stop the sensation that the world had slipped  sideways, suddenly and with great force.

*

There was no conscious decision or movement, only a sort of roar in his ears and the realization that he was across the room now, with no recollection of getting there.

It was only Will and no one else in the room, but there might as well have been.  He hadn’t even _tried_ to hide it with the courtesy of a shower.  A floral perfume - cheap and false, not that it would have been any easier to bear if it were something better - clung to him like a shadow, as if someone had rubbed herself all over Will. _Marked_ him.

(“It kills you that you can’t take out an announcement in the paper, doesn’t it?” Will had murmured once, low and lazy, as Hannibal had pressed a fingertip hard against the fading bloom of a mark sucked into Will’s hip.  “Or skywrite it.  Or did you want matching tattoos?”  Hannibal hadn’t responded, bending his head instead to worry at the mark again with lips and teeth.  Words hadn’t seemed necessary: Will _knew_ that tattoos and scars weren’t permanent enough.  He’d known that when he pulled Hannibal over the edge.)

The cup in front of Will at the breakfast table was coffee, not whiskey.  Will reeked of alcohol anyway: cheap beer coming out of his pores.  His glance skittered around the room, to Hannibal and then away, vague and restless.  

He looked used up.  He looked as if someone else had used him up.

Hannibal didn’t need to hear him confirm it, or to have the sordid details spelled out for him.

*

> There were odd, vertiginous moments when Hannibal failed to recognize his own reflection in the mirror.
> 
> In retrospect, he could admit that Bedelia had been right: He had not been trying particularly hard to stay hidden in Italy.  But he was trying now, this new existence precarious and precious.  His wardrobe barely had a pattern or a pocket square in it.  A brief foray into hair dye had been disastrous - the only comfort was that Will had hated it even more than Hannibal had, and they’d both agreed to never try it again - but he’d let his hair grow longer and stay messier.
> 
> There were compensations. Will liked him this way, apparently. He leaned against Hannibal and nuzzled into the softest of his sweaters and said, “I like this one, I might steal it.”
> 
> "If you must,” Hannibal had said, tolerant as one might be with a wayward puppy or child.
> 
>  "I must,” Will had said, and had absconded with the sweater shortly thereafter, never to return it to Hannibal’s closet.
> 
> Will didn’t suffer from the same confusion about his self-image.  He appeared much the same as he always had, able to rely on his innate protean nature more than external disguises to avoid attracting attention.  He shifted personas intentionally in public now, and it amused Hannibal to play at  recognizing where Will had picked up a particular mannerism - a turn of phrase from a waitress, a particular hand gesture Hannibal recognized as one of his own.
> 
> “Move over, sugar,” Will had drawled at Hannibal a few days earlier, returning from the bathroom to find his spot on the bench encroached upon by a nearby tourist.
> 
> Hannibal hadn’t quite choked on his own tongue, but it had been a near thing, and he still hadn’t managed to prise from Will who on earth he picked up _sugar_ from.
> 
> It might have been something he’d overheard from a passing tourist and filed away in the shimmering, deep-sea caverns of his mind.  But it was equally possible that it was something his wife had called him, and the thought made something howl and churn in Hannibal’s stomach.
> 
> If there ever came a time when his promises to Will no longer held, he would neither eat her nor display her.  She would simply vanish, as if she had never been, as if he could retroactively excise her from Will’s life.  It was a warming thought, and kept the clawed, jealous thing inside him more or less at bay.

*

There were knives, of course, and other objects that could be turned to use as weapons.  They both took care that there should be, in all the rooms.  They would not be caught unarmed and unaware: taken in separately, torn apart.  

None of the arrangements had been made with the intention of use on each other.  Hannibal had supposed, in the early days when Will’s intentions had been more opaque to him, that Will would still do him the courtesy of bare hands if it came to that.  

He hadn’t considered the alternative: that he could ever again look at Will Graham and see only _betrayal_.  That his hand might twitch, even for a moment, in search of a linoleum knife long since locked away in an evidence locker.

It was only a moment, just that single twitch.  But it was enough for Will to flinch, reading Hannibal as he always had, since the blinders had come off.  He tightened his white-knuckled grip on the coffee mug even further before pushing it away.  

He stretched his hands out carefully flat on the tabletop - pale and just the slightest bit trembling.  Long, beautifully formed fingers that had sewn Hannibal up and laid him bare and would one day end him, if he were very, very lucky.

 _Do your worst_ , the motion seemed to say.   _I won’t fight it_.   _Look how I’ll give this to you.  Please let me; please take it._

*

That was the point, of course.  Hannibal would have seen it right away if he hadn’t been winded by the gut-punch of Will reeking of someone else’s touch.

He should have seen it coming.  Will had tried leaving and living; he’d tried leaving and dying.  There was a certain off-kilter sense in this: staying, and letting Hannibal be the one to do for Will what he had not been able to do for himself.

Perhaps giving Will the ending he craved would be the real kindness; perhaps it would be love.  It made as much sense to Hannibal as anything else that people had named _love_ , in their endless dreary parade through his Baltimore office.  

*

Gripping the countertop was something Hannibal could do with his hands that was not lethal.  He held tight, white-knuckled, until the roar in his ears had died back and he could think again.

*

> “I’m not going to hold you to that, you know,” Will had said in their bed, breathless against him.  “If you want to take it back.”
> 
> Hannibal hadn’t meant to say it just then. He would have liked to make a grand gesture of it, something to honor the years it had taken for him to realize his love and then for Will to be ready to hear it.  But he hadn’t had any hope of holding the words back, really.  Not from the moment he’d understood that Will intended to take him to bed a second time, that the first hadn’t been as he had feared: an experiment not to be repeated.
> 
> Of course he’d said it: _I love you_ every way he could think of, with words and hands and body, _I’ve loved you for so long, oh, I love you_.
> 
> “I have no desire to take it back,” he’d responded to Will’s gentle teasing, almost primly.  He’d been trying and mostly failing to grasp at the composure he thoroughly lacked at the moment, still flushed with afterglow.
> 
> Will had smiled at him, tender-soft the way Hannibal had rarely seen him since the early days of their acquaintance, and said only, “Good.”

*

Hannibal wasn’t sure when he had closed his eyes, but he left them that way when he could finally speak without snarling.  He kept his tight grip on the countertop, to reassure himself as much as Will.

“Go upstairs, Will. Go to bed.”  He could hear Will’s breath, and no sounds of movement.

“I can’t sleep,” Will finally said, all gravelly exhaustion.  It shouldn’t have been possible to want to hurt someone and want to comfort them in the same heartbeat’s worth of time, but then those urges had been twinned in Hannibal from the beginning, where Will was concerned.  “Haven’t slept in days.  Why do you think I--”  

The end of that sentence broke, a jagged bridge jutting out over an abyss.   _Fucked someone who wasn’t you_ , he might say.  Or maybe he’d say it more prettily, but it would amount to the same thing in the end.  Will could have come home but hadn’t; he’d done this instead, and Hannibal didn’t want to hear him name it.

“ _Go_ ,” Hannibal said, and then there was no space in him to say anything else.

He waited, eyes closed, until he finally heard the scrape of the chair on the floor  Will’s footsteps moved past him and away.

He didn’t open his eyes until he heard the shower running.

There was that, at least.  Will wouldn’t take someone else’s scent with him to their bed.

*

It was just as well that Will slept fretfully but long.  Hannibal needed quiet and time for the task ahead.

It had been a long time since there had been an experience painful enough to warrant new construction in the hidden parts of Hannibal’s memory palace.  His days were precious now and each worth storing, even the ones that involved physical or emotional discomfort.  There had been long stretches of time under Alana’s care that did not warrant recollection, but neither had they needed the sort of intentional banishment that was necessary now.

It had been hard to learn the first time: building an oubliette deep enough and hidden enough that there would be no stumbling across it accidentally, where the most painful of memories could be exiled.  It wasn’t a use that his tutors had ever anticipated when they’d taught him to use the memory palace for more mundane and scholarly purposes.  

Still, out of necessity he had taught himself long ago how to modify their lessons to this end.  The knowledge of the technique remained, burned into him irrevocably like a long-healed brand.

He used it now, brick by brick, to prepare a place for the seething thing that had risen up in his chest and still sat there, heavy and burning, threatening everything.

*

> They rarely spoke the names of their shared and separate dead.  They spoke of many things past and present, but not of their ghosts.  Hannibal suspected that Will thought of them rather more often than Hannibal himself did.
> 
> There were many things about Will that had washed away in the ocean, leaving him a more pure and concentrated version of himself, bright and fierce, gentle and fearfully beloved.  But not this.  He still carried the weight of what he believed to be his sins with him.  Hannibal would have taken that weight from Will if he could, or taught him how to bury the memories where they could no longer trouble him, but he knew better than to offer.  Will would never have allowed it.

*

Will slept for hours, long enough for Hannibal to get a semblance of a hold on himself and the things he needed to say.  Perhaps he should have said them long since.

Hannibal took up residence in the chair near the bedroom window and watched until Will woke and sat upright, knees pulled in tight to his chest, eyeing Hannibal warily.

“Will you talk to me now?” Will finally asked, when Hannibal didn’t begin first.  

Hannibal held up his open hands mutely: _look, no sharp objects_.

Will barked a short, sharp laugh.  When he spoke, the words sounded dredged from somewhere painful: “I don’t know what to say.  I didn’t think you were going to give me a chance to say something.”  He shook his head slowly, as if in wonder at his own foolishness. “Stupid. Of course you’d want to _talk_.”

Hannibal could feel the raw, angry, jealous thing squirming where he’d locked it away.  He pushed it down and back, further into the tomb he’d built for it.  It would learn its place eventually; down with the rest of the things he’d chosen not to remember.

“You owe me a debt,” he said, instead of asking the questions that the thing wanted to know.   _Who was it_ and _did you think about me_ and _would you let me kill her, would we do it together_ and _which of us were you trying to hurt more_.  “I have no intention of letting you escape repaying it.”

Confusion flickered over Will’s features.  “I don’t understand.”

“You took my death into your own hands, Will.  I gave it to you, the night you freed me.”

“And I failed.”  Will sighed and tipped his head back against the headboard.  “You know I don’t want you to die. I didn’t really want it then. It was just…” He waved a hand in a vague gesture that Hannibal couldn’t interpret. He suspected Will didn’t even know himself what he meant by it.

“It’s still yours.  You can’t hand a life back as easily as that once it’s been given to you.”  Hannibal’s throat felt tight and hot, as if the thing inside him were trying to claw its way out.  “If you’re determined to die, Will, don’t try to trick me into doing it for you.  If you must finish what you started, there are plenty of cliffs high enough for both of us.”

Will stared at him with an unreadable expression.

“You don’t want that.”

“I threw in my lot with yours a long time ago.  There are many things left that I’d hoped to show you.  I’ll settle for dying at your hand along with you, if that’s what you have to offer me, but not for anything less.”

“You’re trying to hold me hostage.”

Hannibal shook his head and said, “That’s not what I’m doing.”  Perhaps it was, in a small way, but that didn’t make what he’d said any less true.  Will dying without him was so much worse than any of the alternatives; it was the only completely intolerable outcome.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.  Shadows lengthened in the silent room and  eventually Will held out a hand, mute and pained.

Hannibal took his place in bed next to Will and let Will gentle him into lying down.  They melted into each other slowly, limbs twining until they might have been one creature after all. So that there never could have been any question of either of them dying alone.

*

It was some time after that before their bed saw any use other than sleeping or nightmares.  Their nights were much like those early weeks before Will had first come to Hannibal’s bed: a high-wire balancing act over a fragile detente.  They slept entangled, but nothing more.  It was enough to wake in the night and hear Will still breathing.

When they eventually tumbled off the high-wire ( _Are you even listening to me?_ Will had asked, and Hannibal hadn’t had any answer except to kiss Will, which was all he’d been thinking about for at least five minutes or for years, depending on how one counted) they landed hard.  

They crashed into each other, veering wildly: frantic to gentle to possessive. Hannibal’s pulse hammered harsh under his skin and his thoughts raced with it.   _Mine, we belong to each other, how could he have let anyone else, mine, mine, oh,_ until he ceased thinking in words at all.

Afterwards, in the wreckage of their bedsheets, Will traced a thumbnail across Hannibal’s chest, slow and deliberate, hard enough to hurt.  He followed the line of it with his mouth, pain and its relief all at once.

*

> The garden’s offerings were a mixed success, but the tomatoes grew well.  They were drowning in them within a few weeks, and even Hannibal’s culinary creativity was taxed.
> 
> “We’re canning,” Will announced after one tomato-heavy meal too many, and sent Hannibal out for the few bits of necessary equipment they didn’t already have.  Hannibal returned to find Will already deep into the process of blanching a small mountain of tomatoes, hair beginning to plaster itself to his forehead from the steam.
> 
> He watched from the doorway for a minute until Will glanced back over his shoulder and said, “Get in here. I’m not doing this alone. I hate canning.”
> 
> Hannibal didn’t ask "then why are we doing this?"  or "would leaving tomatoes to rot on the vine really be the worst of our sins?"  He could imagine the answer well enough. It was a homely economy, learned in childhood or perhaps more recently, in the years of their separation.  
> 
> He set the jars down on the counter and rolled up his sleeves to take over part of the work.
> 
> They worked companionably together in the shimmering heat haze. Hannibal let himself imagine a winter to come when he might open the jars and taste summer again.  He considered things he could make for Will in the cooler months, sauces and soups that would warm and nourish them both.  If they were still here then and not long gone, one way or another. 

*

The storm had whipped itself up more quickly than anticipated.  Hannibal was fairly certain that Will should have begun to take them in to shore already. He still wasn’t nearly the sailor that Will was, but he’d begun to develop some sense for it.  They were too far out, and the sky too dark.

Will fiddled with one of the lines and eyed the clouds, but didn’t move.  They held their course as the waves grew choppier.  Hannibal stowed the wine bottle carefully and waited, watchful.

Finally he asked, “Are we going back?”

Will glanced over at him, his expression the carefully neutral one that often spelled trouble of one sort or another.  “I haven’t decided.”

It was a small boat.  Hannibal could overpower Will, if necessary, likely without capsizing them.  He might even manage to bring them back to shore, although if he waited too long the storm might outstrip his fledgling abilities to maneuver the boat on rough waves.  

There was always a temptation to wait too long, where Will was concerned. It was too much of a pleasure watching his mind or body at work in every context.  Too intriguingly likely that his next move would be something Hannibal hadn’t anticipated.

The air was thick with the coming storm; Hannibal could taste as well as smell it.  He took a deep breath and savored the air in his mouth for a long moment.

“If I’m permitted a vote,” he said dryly, “I suggest that we return to shore.  Or that we finish the wine before we drown, if we’re staying here.”

Will stared, but Hannibal caught the brief flicker of a smile before he schooled his face back to neutrality.

“You’re unbelievable,” he muttered, but a few moments later he started to turn the boat around.

They reached shore drenched and just barely ahead of the worst of the storm, but the remains of the wine kept them warm while they sat in the car’s backseat, dripping salt water all over the leather interior.

Hannibal watched and judged carefully to make sure Will was in the right frame of mind, warm and amused and no longer with half a mind out to sea, to time his question.  He held the empty bottle slightly aloft before asking, “Would you have chosen differently if the wine had been better?”

Will snorted and buried himself deeper against Hannibal’s side, face pressed to his damp shirt.  He declined to answer, but his shoulder shook once in what Hannibal took for a silent laugh.

Pleased with himself, he stroked Will’s hair idly and turned to watch a lone seabird outside the window, buffeted by the wind.

*

Melancholy arrived again with the changing of the season and turned Will into a ghost.  He drifted through the house, silent and withdrawn more often than not.  He slept much of the day away and stayed up late, tinkering in a way that seemed to Hannibal to be simply taking apart the same items and piecing them back together again, with no other purpose.

But he stayed.

He was _there_ , where Hannibal could see him and know he was nearby and doing himself no physical harm that could not be mended in time.  Hannibal glutted himself on that knowledge.  It wasn’t always necessary to be with Will, only to know that he _could_ be, if he climbed the steps or cooked something that would lure Will from his solitude with tempting scents.  Will would appear and eat at least a few bites before he faded away again, back to the second bedroom he’d claimed as his workshop, where he paced and tinkered and read the same pages of the same books endlessly.

Will had been haunting Hannibal for years in a variety of ways.  This wasn’t so different.  It was very nearly comforting.

*

> “I’m going to need something to _do_ ,” Will had said, wandering restive around the living room of the first safe house they’d settled in, once they’d come ashore from their voyage by boat.  He ran his hands over surfaces, idly fidgeting with each item he passed.  “I can’t exactly take up criminal profiling again.”
> 
> “You could teach,” Hannibal offered. “It shouldn’t be difficult to arrange the proper credentials.”
> 
> Will only considered that for a few seconds before discarding it.  “No, I don’t think… No.”  He snapped his mouth shut on whatever he’d been about to say.
> 
> Hannibal could follow the train of thought easily enough.  Will didn’t think he should be shaping minds, not given the things he had done and the man he’d become.  He was wrong, but never mind.
> 
> There had been a time, years ago, when Hannibal might have been able to calm Will’s pacing with a hand on his shoulder or, when he was farther lost to the wildfire in his head, a hand to his cheek or back.  The urge to try it now was nearly overwhelming.
> 
> There had been a period of overwhelming closeness on the boat - with no room to do anything _but_ touch as needed to maneuver around each other in the small space, to share meals and chores and alternate shifts in the same bunk, there was no other option.  Contact had become almost commonplace.
> 
> Abruptly released into the relative freedom of the safe house (small and sparse, but the boat could have fit into it several times over), they seemed to orbit each other, uncertain, bouncing off each other’s sharp edges.
> 
> Hannibal folded his hands neatly where they could do no harm and said only, “Give yourself time, Will.  Something will come to you.”
> 
> It sounded like a platitude even as he said it.  He couldn’t blame Will for glaring at him blackly and then resuming his pacing.

*

“What would you prescribe if I were a patient?”  Will was speaking again, more or less, after days of silence.  But his smile was stil a pale simulacrum of itself when he added, “A real one.  Not one of your proteges.”

“Nothing you’d find surprising.  You can guess, I think.”  

Will had had therapists before Hannibal; he’d likely had some afterwards, though he’d just as likely told them lies.  He knew all the tricks. He ticked off the options on his fingers.  “Sleep, food, exercise. Two out of three ain’t bad.  Meditation makes me want to claw my own eyes out.  Pills?”

Hannibal hummed, noncommittal.  There were options for obtaining prescriptions, but he didn’t think Will would like the thought of medication any more now than he ever had.

" _Journalling_ ,” Will said with great disgust in his voice. “You’d love that.  You’d read everything I wrote down.  Don’t try to deny it.”

Hannibal had rarely suggested journalling, in fact - it invited the horrible spectre of his patients wanting him to _read_ their dreary thoughts and interpret their dull dreams  - but he didn’t correct Will.  He’d have crawled bodily into Will’s dreams, if it were possible.

“I suppose we’re not touching the codependent-boyfriend issue.”

Hannibal narrowed his eyes and refused to rise to the bait.  Codependency might have been a term he’d have used for other, lesser patients, but never for Will and himself.   _Conjoined_ had been the right word, ever since Will had first said it.

“The only advice I can imagine you would have taken,” he said instead, “is to keep yourself busy and to let time do its work. I might have suggested you find a project or a new hobby for distraction.”

“Hmm.”  Will glanced toward the sliding door leading outside to the garden.  “I never want to see another tomato. I could put in more herbs if there’s some stupid fancy thing you’re missing that’ll grow here.”

There wasn’t, particularly, but Hannibal could come up with something. Perhaps more of the aromatic basils.  “I’ll make you a list,” he offered.  “It can’t be any worse than starting a journal.”

Will made a face and looked away into the distance.  He fell back into a considering silence and Hannibal wished, not for the first time and likely not the last, for a window into his mind.

*

The dog - Hannibal supposed it must be a dog, but it was mostly a jumble of skin-and-bones with patchy fur and lopsided ears - eyed him warily.

“If you’d warned me, I would have prepared something to greet him,” he murmured, keeping his voice quiet and steady.

“If I’d warned you,” Will said from the doorway, “you might have vetoed him.”

The dog wobbled - something seemed to be not quite right with its hind leg - and cough-wheezed wetly at Hannibal.

It was entirely possible that Will had walked into an animal shelter and asked for the oldest, sickest, shortest-time-left-to-live dog that they could possibly find, for a man who needed something to occupy his days and couldn’t commit to anything long-term.  Looking at the grey creature in front of him, Hannibal suspected that was more or less exactly what had happened.

“I thought about calling him Project,” Will continued with a smirk in his voice, “but he’s too old to give him a new name, and I think he might be too deaf to learn it anyway.  Sorry.  We’re stuck with the one he came with.”

Hannibal reached out, as slow and unthreatening as he had tried to be in the early days of knowing Will. The dog sniffed at his hand and then allowed him to reach for its collar and the (tacky, plastic, in need of immediate replacement) name tag dangling from it.

 _Jack_.

He’d imagined he might buy Will a hunting hound, something sleek and lethal and bred for a single purpose.  If Will hadn’t liked “Virgil” then perhaps “Tarō” would have done well.

Jack looked up at him, rheumy-eyed, and licked the back of his hand wetly. Will’s laugh was balm enough to make up for the slimy sensation.

Hannibal stood upright again and held his hand slightly away from his body.  “If I go find something for him to eat while you bring in the supplies, do you think he can manage not to die in our hallway while we’re gone?”

“Wouldn’t want to bet on it,” Will said.

By the time they both returned, Will with a bag of treats and toys, and Hannibal with some leftover meat he’d rinsed clean of sauce, Jack was fast asleep.  He appeard to have collapsed right where they left him. He snored, not particularly quietly.

Hannibal looked down at him, nonplussed.  He had a very bad feeling that Jack might perk up under Will’s care and feeding - who wouldn’t? - and go on to live for a long time, unkempt and wobbly.  He would probably sleep in their bed.  Will would probably feed him from the table during meals.  It could go on for years.  Years of mud on the carpets and dog hair in the sheets.

There were worse fates by far, he thought, and set the plate down next to Jack’s head.  Jack’s failure to do anything but snore even more loudly suggested that he might be deficient in sense of smell, as well as sound.

Will came to stand by Hannibal, leaning against him and letting Hannibal take his weight and put his arm around Will’s waist.  They stared together, down at the noisy sack of fur and bones sprawled at their feet, and eventually Will sighed.

“Was this a terrible idea?  Do you hate him?”

Hannibal drew him closer, tighter, as if the sheer force of his wish for them to merge into one being could make it so.

“It’s a wonderful idea as long as he doesn’t sleep in our bedroom,” he said, well aware it was an entirely futile gesture.

Will sagged ever so slightly against him, a release of tension. “Maybe just for a night or two.  Until he knows he belongs here with us.”

They watched a moment longer before Hannibal tugged Will gently away, back to the kitchen to see what they had in the freezer that might serve for Jack’s supper as well as their own.

*

> Watching Will select a boat to steal was a delight beyond anything Hannibal could have anticipated.  He’d have been happy to watch Will deliberate for hours, had time allowed, but it would have been reckless beyond even Hannibal’s taste for flirting with capture. They had covered their tracks from the cliff as best as they could, but the FBI would close in soon enough.
> 
> They chose a boat and freed it, and took to the sea together for a second time.
> 
> Hannibal took a seat near Will.  He sat down too fast, suddenly wobbly with exhaustion now that he no longer needed to move.  He watched for half an hour or so, long enough to watch the land fade from sight and to be reasonably sure no one was following them. Will appeared to be focused entirely on the boat and the sea, barely sparing a glance for Hannibal.  But he had helped Hannibal into the boat.  His touch had been warm and gentle, and he hadn’t flinched or hesitated.
> 
> Eventually Hannibal let himself stretch out, biting back a groan as the movement jostled the injuries left by Francis and by their long fall and longer climb.  His eyes drifted half-closed. He ached, muscle and skin and heart.
> 
> “You can go down and rest if you want,” he vaguely heard Will say.  
> 
> He shook his head but was too tired to find words in a language Will could understand.  There would be a cabin below, and a bed, but it felt a million miles away, and Will wouldn’t be there.  
> 
> “Okay, but you’re going to be sorry later.”
> 
> Will’s voice came from miles away.  Hannibal thought he felt Will’s hand brush his hair from his face, warm and gentle.  But perhaps that was only something he dreamed, or wished.  When he opened his eyes again, Will was back in position steering the boat, out of reach.
> 
> Hannibal floated, not precisely asleep or awake.  The boat rocked gentle underneath him.  It seemed to him in his haze that they were being cradled by the ocean.  As if it had swallowed them and spat them out and were now welcoming them back, as if they’d never left.  As if they were coming home, together, at last.


End file.
